(a Tin Pan Alley songwriter). Robert and his younger brother Richard wrote countless songs for many Disney features and park attractions. Among their best known tunes - "Feed the Birds" & "Chim-Chim-Cheree"

from Mary Poppins and the park attraction theme "It's A Small World (after all)."

1929:

Floyd Gottfredson from Utah is hired as an apprentice animator at Disney. (In April

1930 he will start working on the 4-month-old Mickey Mouse comic strip.)

Disney releases Destino to theaters (although it had already premiered back in

June at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival). Featuring the work of surrealist

artist Salvador Dalí, the short was first conceived 57 years ago when Walt invited Dalí to the Studio to work on

a film project along with Disney artist John Hench. But after filming 18 seconds of this animation, the project

was unfortunately canceled. In 2003, Roy E. Disney helped resurrect Destino with the help of producer Baker

Bloodworth and director Dominique Monfrey. (It will be nominated for an Oscar.)

Touchstone Pictures releases the British comedy Calendar Girls. Based on a true story of a group of middle-aged Yorkshire women who produced a nude calendar to raise money for Leukaemia Research, the film stars Helen Mirren, Julie Walters, Linda Bassett, and Annette Crosbie.

1868:

Novelist Eleanor H. Porter is born in Littleton, New Hampshire. Her novel Pollyanna

(published in 1913) was released as a live-action feature by Disney in 1960. Porter achieved considerable commercial success: during 1913, Pollyanna ranked eighth among bestselling novels in the United States.

The Disneyland tradition of a giant Christmas tree towering over Main Street, U.S.A. began in 1955. Disneyland was the last

Disney park in the world to

still utilize a real live tree as

its holiday centerpiece in

Town Square! For the first time in 53 years an artificial tree was used in 2008.

Screenwriter, playwright, and novelist Linda Woolverton is born in Long Beach, California. Her most prominent works include the screenplays and books of several acclaimed Disney films and stage musicals. She is the first woman to have written an animated feature for Disney, Beauty and the Beast (1991), which is also the first animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards. Woolverton also co-wrote the screenplay of The Lion King, and adapted her own Beauty and the Beast screenplay into the book of the Broadway adaptation of the film, for which she received a Tony Award nomination and won an Olivier Award.

Her Disney films credits also include Aladdin, Mulan, Alice in Wonderland, Alice Through the Looking Glass, and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil.